Gerber Life Insurance for Infants

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Almost everyone will tell you that in financial terms, kids are a liability, not an asset. Unless you have a child actor or some other high income producing kid, there is no reason you should buy life insurance on them, you'd have better odds using that $2/week to buy scratch off lottery tickets (no, I'm not recommending that you actually do that, just saying that your odds are better).

The amazing thing about these types of policies is that a typical, more established insurance company will fall all over itself to sell you a whole life policy for your kids, and it will be better coverage for less money. In addition, it may be possible to leverage the purchase of a whole life policy into multi-policy discounts on other insurance lines.

This assumes you want whole life coverage for your kids to begin with. There are some ethnicities that regard this as an important thing to do (the intention in some cases being that due to historical infant / child mortality rates, it was imperative to make certain that funds would be available for a proper burial if the need arose).

LustfortheMoment said: Premal, Gerber's is well aware of the adage, "A sucker is born every minute". They're not preying upon the infants. They're preying upon idiotic parents..........

Life insurance for infants? What a joke.

No surprise, they want to sell you crap food for your babies also! Subsidiary of one of the top third word baby killers, Nestle

We have life insurance through work on our kids--I pay $26 a year for all three policies of 15k each. It would cover funeral expenses and other related stuff if we ever needed it.

The concept of insuring the kids for a small amount isn't bad, just the deal that most companies try to sell you.

This life insurance is NOT to be treated as health insurance or loss of income insurance if your child has some serious illness (obviously). This is what it is, if your child or grandchild dies you get the money the child is insured for.

To me it is pretty wasteful. Your family depends on you and/or spouse financially, so it makes sense to provide the same financial support in case you die. Are you dependent on your kids for financial support? How lame is it to get an insurance for their funeral expenses in case they die? Do you draw comfort thinking that you are covered financially in case they die?

Gerber is preying on the emotions of the new born parents and grand parents by putting a $ sign on the their faces to question how much you value them. It's almost a challenge, don't you value them at all? do you value them only $10,000? Your affordability for the premium is the limit and you are happy you did the best.

GermanExpat said: I I had friends with a child that had terminal cancer and died last year. They did spend a lot of money out of their pockets and my friend took 6 month off from work to care for his son. His wife also quit her part time job. It was quite a strain on their finances.
I don't say that this gerber policy is good, this is just an explanation why whole life for kids can be useful.

While I see your point, the odds of this happening are so slim that an emergency fund or a rainy day fund, or even a college fund would be a better choice than the whole life. For example, if something as tragic as this were happening in my family, I'd drain my daughter's 529 plan in a heartbeat in order for my DH and I to take off work and be with her. If that was used up, I'd dip into savings or even home equity, but unless I knew in advance something like this would happen, having savings is a better bet than having whole life on a child.